A thirst for knowledge: Nation’s first Swarovski ‘waterschool’ will start up in 2017

Nation’s first will start up in 2017

The Lewis and Clark Community College’s National Great Rivers Research and Education Center will be home to the nation’s only Swarovski Waterschool.

GODFREY — A global education program aimed at teaching kids about the Mississippi River and water preservation will start up after an initial six-month planning phase ends in December, coordinators say.

The Swarovski Waterschool at the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center in Alton will be the first of its kind in North America. The initiative is funded by the Austria-based luxury crystal company Swarovski.

Youth ages 8 to 15 will learn about environmental, economic, social and cultural issues affecting water use on a local and global level at the research center, which is a branch of Lewis and Clark Community College.

Natalie Marioni, lead coordinator of the project, said an initial six-month planning phase for the program will come to an end in December, and coordinators will submit a final plan to Swarovski at the end of January. Marioni is also the director of environmental education and citizen science at the research center.

Swarovski provided up to $25,566 for the six-month pilot phase, and will provide about $75,000 per year for three years starting in early 2017, Marioni said. Funds will go toward educational resources, teacher workshops and resources, and support for local schools. Staff from the college and research center will implement and run the program.

Detailed plans on how the program will be implemented are still in the pilot phase, but coordinators have certain goals in mind.

“One of the goals really is to ultimately empower youth to make tangible, positive impacts on how their community interacts with and makes decisions about the watershed where they live,” Marioni said.

Another goal is to educate and train area teachers in water issues, encourage students to share ideas with one another and to come up with ideas on how they can improve their river ecosystem, the coordinator added.

“We want to guide students through issues they see within their community. A student in East St. Louis where there’s a wall so they can’t even see the river might see things very differently than a student in Alton who can physically see the river everyday,” Marioni said.

So far, the grant has been used to reach out to students and teachers in the region to figure out what is missing in water and river education, said Sharon Locke, a co-coordinator and associate professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

An intern working with Locke interviewed students over the summer, and Marioni is communicating with teachers, Locke said.

“We’ve gained some interesting insights about what they (students) know about their drinking water, and they’re very interested in understanding more about pollution, water quality and also things like how did the river form and how has the Mississippi River influced history in this region,” Locke said. “We hope that when you understand a resource you perhaps are more likely to think about how to preserve that resource.”

Students are also interested in the river in terms of transportation and as a fishing resource, Locke added.

Swarovski reached out to the research center in 2014, Marioni said, and the company “recognized we have the means and interest to establish an education program like this,” she added.

The Mississippi River is a logical location for the waterschool because it is one of the largest river basins in the world, Marioni said, on par with rivers where other Swarovski Waterschools are located — including the Danube in Austria, the Ganges in India, the Yangtze in China, the Nile in Uganda, the Amazon in Brazil — and now the Mississippi River at East Alton.

Swarovski set up its first waterschool in 2000 along the Danube. Water preservation is integral to the 120-year-old company, said Nadja Swarovski, a member of the Swarovski Executive Board. Water is used to generate energy and in the manufacturing of crystals.

“Water continues to be fundamental to our company, and more than ever we understand its place as the source of all life on the planet,” Swarovski said in a news release. “This is why, in everything we do to give back to the wider world, we choose to put water first.”

The school in Austria provides five-day courses for schools in which park rangers teach sustainable water management, according to the company’s website.

Connecting students with others abroad is another future goal of the Mississippi River program, the coordinator said.

“We’ll focus first locally and then goal is to implement the program up and down river through various partnerships and maybe outward into the basin, too,” Marioni said. “We want to make sure that we’re connecting students not only with other students locally but connecting those students with the global perspective — what are the issues they are experiencing and how are they tackling that?”

Founded in 1895 in Austria, Swarovski designs, manufactures and markets crystals, gemstones and stones as well as finished products such as jewelry, accessories and lighting. Swarovski Crystal Business has a global reach with approximately 2,680 stores in around 170 countries, more than 26,000 employees, and revenue of about 2.6 billion euros in 2015.

Founded in 2002 as a collaborative partnership between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Lewis and Clark Community College, the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center is dedicated to the study of great river systems and the communities that use them.

The Lewis and Clark Community College’s National Great Rivers Research and Education Center will be home to the nation’s only Swarovski Waterschool.

http://thetelegraph.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_NGRREC.jpgThe Lewis and Clark Community College’s National Great Rivers Research and Education Center will be home to the nation’s only Swarovski Waterschool.